Wrentit Sycamore Canyon Ventura County coastal Southern California -252
"Ever wonder whether biologists' constant renaming and reshuffling of organisms from one taxonomical pigeonhole to another has any actual importance in the real world?
You could ask the wrentit. A tiny bird that lives in stands of chaparral along the California coast, the wrentit was just reassigned from one family of birds to another -- and as a result, it's now protected under one of America's oldest environmental laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA).
How'd this happen? It has to do with a group of scientists who discuss bird taxonomy in the U.S., and how the agency responsible for enforcing the MBTA follows those scientists' lead in determining which birds are protected by the law.
...
Taxonomic categories reflect, as closely as we can determine, which groups of organisms share common ancestors, and how those common ancestors were themselves related to each other. As we learn more about how we all evolved, through DNA analysis and other means, we learn that some of our old notions about how each of us fit into the big evolutionary jigsaw puzzle need to be updated. When that happens, taxonomy often needs to change as well.
The wrentit, Chamaea fasciata, is part of a larger group of birds that has perplexed ornithologists for some time. In recent years it's been bounced between five different closely related families depending on which ornithologist is writing about them. Until recently the AOU Checklist put the wrentit in the family Timaliidae, commonly known as Old World babblers, a huge group of small songbirds similar to warblers and thrushes. Most Old world babblers are native to Eurasia, Africa, and Australasia, with an especially diverse number of species in the Indian subcontinent.
...What does all this mean? There hasn't been any change in the wrentit, but as a result of a taxonomical technicality it now enjoys the protection of a law that is, when USFWS decides to enforce it, a fairly stringent environmental protection law. Once the ruling becomes effective on December 1, big development projects that threaten to disrupt California's chaparral habitat have one more wildlife species to consider, and one more set of permits to get before they can start cutting down coyote brush.
Not a bad result from a group of scientists considering what might seem forbiddingly wonky data."
Chris Clarke
kcet.org
Wrentit Sycamore Canyon Ventura County coastal Southern California -252
"Ever wonder whether biologists' constant renaming and reshuffling of organisms from one taxonomical pigeonhole to another has any actual importance in the real world?
You could ask the wrentit. A tiny bird that lives in stands of chaparral along the California coast, the wrentit was just reassigned from one family of birds to another -- and as a result, it's now protected under one of America's oldest environmental laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA).
How'd this happen? It has to do with a group of scientists who discuss bird taxonomy in the U.S., and how the agency responsible for enforcing the MBTA follows those scientists' lead in determining which birds are protected by the law.
...
Taxonomic categories reflect, as closely as we can determine, which groups of organisms share common ancestors, and how those common ancestors were themselves related to each other. As we learn more about how we all evolved, through DNA analysis and other means, we learn that some of our old notions about how each of us fit into the big evolutionary jigsaw puzzle need to be updated. When that happens, taxonomy often needs to change as well.
The wrentit, Chamaea fasciata, is part of a larger group of birds that has perplexed ornithologists for some time. In recent years it's been bounced between five different closely related families depending on which ornithologist is writing about them. Until recently the AOU Checklist put the wrentit in the family Timaliidae, commonly known as Old World babblers, a huge group of small songbirds similar to warblers and thrushes. Most Old world babblers are native to Eurasia, Africa, and Australasia, with an especially diverse number of species in the Indian subcontinent.
...What does all this mean? There hasn't been any change in the wrentit, but as a result of a taxonomical technicality it now enjoys the protection of a law that is, when USFWS decides to enforce it, a fairly stringent environmental protection law. Once the ruling becomes effective on December 1, big development projects that threaten to disrupt California's chaparral habitat have one more wildlife species to consider, and one more set of permits to get before they can start cutting down coyote brush.
Not a bad result from a group of scientists considering what might seem forbiddingly wonky data."
Chris Clarke
kcet.org